Vivek Sivathanu

2013 - 2015

Alumni

Legatum Fellow

From:

India

Sector:

Heathcare/Pharma

Location:

India

Degree:

PhD, School of Engineering

Vivek Sivathanu, growing up in South India, has seen how very few people there are able to benefit from significant scientific advances in healthcare diagnosis. Only select specialty hospitals have advanced and expensive equipment, and they are neither accessible nor affordable to most people. Rural India also has an abysmal doctor patient ratio of 1 to 30,000 that exacerbates the problem. His goal is to use his engineering expertise, through Peepod, to create low cost, automated solutions to deliver quality healthcare to the bottom of the pyramid.

The initial focus of Peepod will be on type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes affects more than 63 million people in India. In well over half, the disease is undiagnosed. If it is left untreated, they often pay the dreadful price of vision loss, kidney disease, leg ulcers, neural problems, heart disease, or stroke.

The design is based on novel technologies that use clinically validated biomarkers to aid in the diagnosis of diabetes and in the monitoring of its progression. The system will be robust and affordable in resource-limited settings. Its low cost makes it suitable to create a widespread distributed network of kiosks that will give people access to high quality healthcare for the first time. The data collected will be analyzed by inbuilt analytics and transmitted to local doctors. They, in turn, will be more effective, having a scientific basis on which to make triage decisions. Patient will receive critical care when they need it.

Vivek has a strong background in engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras. He is now a doctoral candidate in MIT Mechanical Engineering conducting healthcare oriented research. While at MIT he has been involved in several entrepreneurial activities, which have helped hone his scientific and business expertise. Vivek is a co-organizer of the MIT Global Startup, a student-run international entrepreneurship conference.

 https://www.f6s.com/eaglehealth